Back to school night

This past Wednesday was the dreaded back to school night. Why dreaded? I don't know. All the parents who came and stayed beyond getting free school supplies were nice and attentive and interested. If they weren't they wouldn't have stayed.

But my CT was kind of disconcerted about meeting parents. She was jittery and talked a little too much in my opinion. I would have loved to mingle around and talked one-on-one with the parents. I would have also loved to ask those who wanted to sign up for home visits and volunteering. Parents are a huge resource and teachers generally don't use them enough.

I suppose I would feel jittery too, but I know many parents of my current/former students and I have never had an unpleasant situation with any of them. I suppose I'm lucky in that sense. Unless there is some unfortunate upheaval, the guardians of students only want what's best for their student. Which should be in line with the teacher's wishes as well.

I really wanted to reassure my CT that things will be fine and it'll work out and parents aren't as demanding as she seemed to think they are. Perhaps she wasn't so lucky as I was with the parental units of her students. Parents can be quite anxious and they have the ability to take it out on their kid's teacher.

Props to the parents who came! My parents never went to a back-to-school night in my entire academic career. Not because they didn't care, but because they trusted the public education system enough to let it do it's thing. Oh, and they worked 16 hours a day, including weekends, which puts a damper on extra activities such as these.

Which goes back to the theoretical usefulness of newsletters. Many parents regularly ask their kids what they did in school, but it's nice to have some confirmation from a teacher's authority. I haven't gotten mine out for Sunday school yet. But I swear it will happen!